


Holding Out For A Hero

by eternaleponine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1425886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was given the prompt of Isaac and hero worship.  This is what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Out For A Hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tryslora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/gifts).



"Don't be such a baby, Isaac!" Camden jeered. "Just jump in!"

But Camden was twelve and Isaac was four and he _was_ still a baby. Well, not really, but he knew that the water was over his head if he just jumped in and he was scared. "Shut up!" he shouted back. "Just because you like swimming doesn't mean I gotta like swimming!"

And it didn't, except it did, because he was a Lahey (his father told him that all the time so he knew) and Laheys liked water. They weren't afraid of it. They swam like fish (that was wrong, Isaac knew, they swam like _people_ because they didn't have fins and gills and stuff, but people said it anyway) and that was just the way things were.

But Isaac didn't know how to swim and Camden being a butthead about it wasn't going to change that. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Or at least not until maybe next year when he was five and then maybe he'd be big enough and not scared anymore.

"Leave your brother alone," Dad said. He dove into the pool in a smooth arch, making it halfway across the pool underwater before surfacing. He turned and swam back, facing his younger son where he stood, one foot on top of the other so that he had to balance, his fist pressed into his cheek, his thumb tucked in so he wouldn't stick it in his mouth no matter how much he wanted to, because he was too old for that everyone said, even if it made him feel better.

He stood on the bottom. Isaac could see his feet planted there, solid like a tree in the ground. "Come on, Isaac," he said. "It's all right. Just jump in and I'll catch you."

Isaac shook his head. Camden had told him that one time, and then he hadn't and Isaac had come up sputtering and flailing, and only then had his brother grabbed him, pulled him up out of the water and set him back on solid ground, laughing as Isaac started to cry. "Nuh-uh."

"Isaac," Dad said, "I'm not going to let anything hurt you. I promise that I'll catch you if you jump in."

He pushed his fist into his cheek harder. "You _promise_?"

"I promise." Dad held out his arms. "You won't even go under. I swear."

Isaac swallowed hard, putting his foot on the ground, shifting his weight back and forth a few times while Dad just stood there with his arms out, waiting, waiting. Dad wouldn't lie, even if Camden did. Dads weren't allowed to lie... right? They weren't allowed to let anything happen to their kids. Those were the rules. 

Yeah, those were the rules.

He took a deep breath, his cheeks puffing out as he held it just in case, and hurled himself into the air, splashing down in his father's arms where he was safe.

And he didn't go under. His hair didn't even get wet. He laughed and kicked his feet and pretended he was a fish.

* * * * *

"You can't go," Isaac said. "Camden, you can't." 

"I have to," his older brother told him, adjusting the camouflage cap that he wore for the hundred thousandth time in the mirror, looking at himself to make sure that everything was exactly in place. "I know it's hard, little bro, but I have to go."

Camden was eighteen and Isaac had thought – they'd all thought – that after high school he would go to college. But that hadn't happened. Wouldn't happen. Couldn't. This was the only way, his brother told him. He just had to serve for a few years, and then he could go to college and start the rest of his life. It was just a few years.

"Mom's sick," Isaac said. "You can't go when Mom's sick."

"Mom's been sick," Camden said. "But she's getting better. I'll visit when I can, and I'll call. I'll email. You'll barely know I'm gone, and anyway, I would be gone if I was going to college, too, right? So it's not any different."

 _Except no one would be shooting at you in college,_ Isaac thought, but he didn't say it. He tried not to think about that part. He was pretty sure that Camden did too. 

*

His brother came home for their mother's funeral, all decked out in his dress uniform, and he stood at stiff attention as she was lowered into the ground. The material of his coat was scratchy against Isaac's cheek as he hugged him tight, and tighter still, and he didn't want to let go (but he did) and he wanted to beg his brother to stay (but he didn't).

Two days later he was gone again.

*

Isaac sat with his headphones on, music blaring in his ears as he worked on his homework, because it helped him think, or at least that's what he told his father. Really, he just wanted to drown out the sounds of the man moving around, cursing as he knocked into furniture, making a mess that Isaac would be expected to clean up. 

And then the headphones were gone and his father's face was in his, so close that when he spoke – shouted – spit flew and spattered his skin. "Are you deaf?" he demanded, his hand fisted in the back of his shirt. "I said, 'Get the damn door, Isaac'!"

His father would have had to walk right past the door to get to his room; why hadn't he answered it himself? But he had to make a point. He had to teach Isaac a lesson. That's what it was all about now, now that it was just the two of them. Teaching Isaac how to be the son that Cam was, that he would never be. 

"So—" Isaac started to say, knowing it was pointless but saying it anyway, like a reflex, then cringed back from whichever tirade his dad decided to choose for reasons why he shouldn't say 'sorry'. 'I'll show you sorry,' was a popular one, or, 'Yeah, you are sorry. Sorry excuse for a son.' 

"I don't want to hear 'sorry', just do as you're told!" He yanked him up out of his chair and shoved him toward the door, but Isaac stumbled and smacked into it, so his lip was bloody when he finally made it to the front door and pulled it open, just a crack, and peered out.

"We're looking—" one of the soldiers started. Isaac slammed the door in his face. The bell rang again, and he knew that if he didn't open it he would pay for it, but he couldn't. He couldn't face what was out there, couldn't face the soldiers standing with their backs straight and their hats off, because he knew. He knew what it meant and he couldn't face it that his brother was never coming back.

 _Don't be such a baby, Isaac._ The memory of Cam's voice echoed in his head like his brother whispered in his ear, but he didn't, couldn't, wouldn't ever again.

He yanked open the door before the soldiers could ring again. 

"I know," he told them. "I'll get my dad."

* * * * *

Although he was tall, Isaac had never felt big. He ran, he played lacrosse, he lifted weights and did all the training that being on the team entailed, but he never felt big... or big enough. There was always something, someone, bigger and badder and just waiting to put him in his place. His father, usually, but not always. 

He felt like he had a target painted on his back all the time, and it didn't matter what he did, he couldn't get it off.

But there was a solution. He could make himself bigger and badder – maybe not the biggest and baddest – but every day ordinary bullies couldn't touch him. So he found Derek, accepted his offer, accepted the bite...

Yet he was still afraid. He was still afraid of his father, he was still intimidated, and he tried to keep the peace as best he could because he didn't know what would happen if he was pushed too far, but when the glass shattered and cut him and it healed, and his father noticed it healing, he ran.

And then he couldn't stop running, because his father turned up dead and they all thought he'd done it but he hadn't. He wished he had, but he hadn't, and even if he'd been given the chance he wasn't sure he ever could have, so whoever – whatever – had, he owed them a debt.

Derek gave him a pack. Friends. Family. He looked out for him, had his back, taught him. He gave him a place to stay, even, when he had nowhere else to go (even if some of their accommodations left something to be desired.) Derek wanted what was best for him.

That's what he told himself when Derek broke his arm. That's what he told himself when he was beaten and bruised, defeated, and Derek was in his face telling him (maybe not in so many words) that he was a failure, that they were all failures, that they were not, never would be, good enough, and that they were going to die if they didn't get their acts together. 

He didn't blame Derek for that, though. It was only because the alpha wanted him to learn, and Isaac _needed_ to learn. It was learn or die, after all, and Isaac didn't want to die. 

And he owed Derek. So he tried, and he failed, and he tried again, and he got better. He learned how to control himself, and even if he used his father as his anchor, it was Derek who he looked to for guidance... looked and rarely found, but he didn't want to admit it because he thought he'd found a home. 

And then it all fell apart, and Derek told him to leave, and maybe that was supposed to be for his own good, too, or for the good of the pack, but it didn't feel that way. It felt...

It felt like, as glass shattered against the wall for the second time in not so long, Isaac's heart, and hope, shattered with it.

* * * * *

"It's okay," Scott told him. "The first time he showed me I cried too."

Why had Derek never told him? They weren't, didn't have to be, monsters. Not all the time, anyway. They could heal, or at least help ease other's hurt, and Derek hadn't told him. What else hadn't Derek told him?

He trusted Scott in a way that he'd never trusted Derek and never would. Scott was _good_. He cared about his friends, his family, his pack. Not that Derek didn't, except... Derek... didn't? Not in the same way. 

Scott wouldn't leave because he had too many people in Beacon Hills who needed him. Isaac told him, "Well I guess that makes me lucky, 'cause uh... 'cause I don't have anyone. So."

He'd believed it when he said it, but then he couldn't make himself leave either, and when Derek kicked him out and he'd had nowhere else to go, he'd shown up soaking wet, as lost as he'd ever been, and Ms. McCall had let him in, and they'd given him a bed, a room all his own, and that was that. He lived there. He belonged. 

He hadn't meant to fall for Allison. He hadn't meant to betray Scott that way. He'd tried not to (sort of), and then he'd tried to make it okay, he'd tried to have Scott punish him for it, he'd tried... 

And he'd failed. Like he always failed.

But in the end it hadn't mattered, and he told himself that it wasn't Scott's fault, but it was easier to blame him than Allison, who had loved him maybe a little but had loved Scott with all that she was, and had died telling him so. He'd been there, he'd seen it, he'd heard it all (even though her voice was breaking, barely a whisper at the end, he heard it all...) and it wasn't anyone's _fault_ but it didn't make it hurt any less.

But what had he expected, really? Everyone he loved left him. Everyone who loved him...

Well, that was a very short list, wasn't it? Did it count as a list when there was no one on it?

* * * * *

"Have you ever been to France, Isaac?"

Mr. Argent's voice startled him out of his reverie; he'd been staring at walls and trying not to think about... anything... again. 

He'd never been out of Beacon Hills, really, except once or twice on family vacations when he was little, before his mother got sick, before his brother left, before his father turned on him like it was all his fault and started locking him in a freezer where Isaac had always been afraid he would forget him.

... they'd gone to Disneyland once. They'd had ice cream shaped like Mickey Mouse and Isaac hadn't eaten his fast enough and it had melted all over him and his father had been annoyed because they were going to a nice place to eat and now he was a mess, so Cam had used his own money to buy Isaac a clean shirt and he'd worn that shirt to death...

He shook his head to clear it of the memory, but Mr. Argent took that as an answer. "Do you want to go?"

"I..." Isaac couldn't figure out what he was asking. He was hearing the words, but they didn't make any sense. "I don't have a passport."

Mr. Argent waved that away. "We can get you one, if you want to go."

"You need parents to get a passport," Isaac said. "They have to sign the forms."

"Or a legal guardian," Mr. Argent replied. "But that's just details. We can worry about that later, if you want to go."

Isaac shrugged. What was in France for him? What was there for him anywhere? "I don't think I even have one of those." He pushed his fist into his cheek, his thumb tucked in tight.

"Melissa McCall. But I've already talked to her and—" Mr. Argent stopped and came over to him, crouching in front of him. "Isaac. Hey." He wrapped his fist in both of his hands, pulling it down and away, holding it. "Hey. It's okay. If you don't want to go, you can say so. I just thought maybe you needed to get away as much as I do right now."

"You're going?" Isaac blinked, not quite looking at him, and bit the inside of his lip so hard he tasted blood. _Of course he's going. Everyone leaves._

"Why else would I be asking? I... need some time. To clear my head. To forget. To remember. I could show you where our family comes from."

Our family? His and Allison's, he must mean. Isaac didn't have any family. He'd tried, and he'd failed, like he always failed. Because it didn't matter how hard he held on, everything slipped away, and he never mattered to anyone like they mattered to him, and...

"Come with me. Just for a while," Mr. Argent said. 

Isaac blinked, his eyes burning, and he nodded. 

*

He didn't know what strings Mr. Argent had pulled, but there must have been some, because within a few days he had a passport, and within a week they were on a plane... which was when Isaac realized how big a mistake he was making. 

It was broad daylight and new moon, and they'd taken every precaution they could think of but somehow he'd failed to take into account the fact that getting to France meant being trapped in a metal tube thousands of feet above the earth's surface for hours on end. 

He started to panic. "I... I need to... I can't..." he stammered, reaching for his seatbelt even as the engines roared in preparation for their final taxi down the runway that would end with their being airborne. "I can't," he said. "I can't."

One hand clamped down on the back of his neck, the other around his wrist to keep him from unfastening the buckle that held him in place, but that wouldn't stand a chance if he really started to lose it. "Yes, you can," Mr. Argent said. 

"No. No, no, no..."

Mr. Argent let go of his hand, but only so that he could reach up and touch his face. "Look at me, Isaac," he said, forcing his head to turn. "I need you to look at me."

Isaac kept shaking his head until Mr. Argent's grip tightened enough that he couldn't. Only then did he open his eyes, and they were so close that all he could see was the blue of his eyes. And then the world shrunk even smaller as Mr. Argent pulled him in so they were forehead to forehead. "You can do this, Isaac," he said. "You're okay. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

He took a deep breath and it came out a shudder, but slowly he nodded. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

"I'm right here," Mr. Argent said, even as he loosened his grip. "I'm not going anywhere."

At least for now, Isaac let himself believe him.


End file.
